Handing Down the Flame of the Dharma

In 2015, Ryukoku University founded the Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures to serve as an international research platform for Buddhist Studies. Since its inception, the center has published a series of academic publications, as well as several collections of lectures aimed at a general audience.
The collection of papers presented here as Handing Down the Flame of the Dharma: Rites and Practices at the Sacred Sites of Japanese Buddhism–the first volume to be published by the center in a foreign language–were originally published in two volumes titled Kaihōgyō and Shugendō (2016) and Shuni’e: Omizutori and Hanaeshiki (2020). Its primary aim is to enrich our understanding of Japanese Buddhism by presenting vivid, first-person accounts of concrete rites and practices. Written by the very people who actually perform these rites and augmented by previously unpublished photographs, these accounts open up a world that is usually inaccessible to the general public.